In Wednesday's Herald Whig there was a story printed with the headline of "Text Messaging Ahead for Pilots, Air Traffic Controllers".  Are you kidding? We can't text and drive, but soon we will be able to text and fly a commercial airline plane with me in it?

The story says they will be able to expedite the take-offs and landings and therefore save billions of dollars in fuel costs. Apparently, the air traffic controllers have been gradually shifting to text messaging pilots, under the radar so to speak, more and more with each passing day.  Boy, that's comforting to know.

They say the texting of a route change by air traffic controllers would be quicker than to verbally command it because they then would have to spell our each letter of each word which would take longer than just texting it. The text words would be in a computer and the controller would just click on the word in the computer to send it to the pilots.  I guess that's good.

I certainly don't want them voice texting commands.  Have you ever voice texted? Have you seen how some of them print out? They are not always accurate. I can see it now, The air traffic controller voice texts..."Southwest 3-9-7-0 proceed 3-zero degrees left" and it prints out "Outbest Treevine seven z row...goseed dirty degrease slept"  Now I'm worried.  Still want to getaway? That's the way I see it.

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